


grieve

by epsiloneridani



Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Hypervigilance, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 14:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16788364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epsiloneridani/pseuds/epsiloneridani
Summary: “Three weeks leave. Then you come back.”Something like panic seizes Jun’s chest. “I don’t have anything to do.”“That’s the point.”—-Reach is ash. Noble’s gone.Jun learns to move on.





	grieve

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: PTSD, hypervigilance, nightmares
> 
> Loosely related to 'alive'.

He’s barely been there three months when Musa hits him with the bomb.

“I think it would be good for you to take some time.”

Jun blinks at him across the conference table. It’s just them now; everyone else has long since gone home but they stayed to scratch through a few piles of paperwork.

“Excuse me?” he manages at last, setting his pen on the table and straightening it until it’s perfectly in line with the paper. “You want me to _what?_ ”

Musa’s unblinking, unmoving. He folds his hands on the table and meets his eyes squarely. “I think,” he repeats, “it would be good for you to take some time.”

“Why?” It bursts out of his chest, a burning breath. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“Don’t be cryptic with me.”

Musa stares at him for another beat. “I want you to take a few weeks,” he says. “It’s not like you’re not owed any leave.”

Maybe a few months’ worth. At least a few months’ worth. Not that he’d ever use it. Not that he’d ever have a reason to. Jun wrinkles his nose. “No thanks.”

“What?”

Jun snorts softly. The pen’s back in his hand, tapping, tapping. When did he pick it up again? Tapping. Tapping. “No thanks,” he says again. “We have too much work to do here.”

“I can handle it for a while. It’s mostly paperwork right now anyway.”

“No.”

“Jun, this isn’t a suggestion.”

Jun grits his teeth. “I’d prefer to stay here,” he returns. “It gives me something to do.”

"Three weeks.” Musa slides the papers across the table, gathers them into his own stack and knocks them against the hardwood to neaten them. The _thwap_ of the edges hitting the desk makes Jun flinch. “Then you’re back.”

“What you’re building is too damn important for me to—”

“What _we’re_ building,” Musa corrects mildly, “I can handle on my own for a few weeks.”

“Musa—”

“Three weeks.”

“What am I supposed to _do?_ ”

He’s silent for a long moment. “Jun,” he says at last, “if you don’t know, then it’s something you’ll have to figure out on your own.”

Damn him.

The sun’s streaming through his apartment windows when Jun rips the door open and slams it behind him so hard the walls rattle. The neighbors will complain. They always complain. They have nothing to complain _about_.

What do they know about anything?

“What the _hell_ does he expect me to do?” Jun asks, and imagines Jorge is sitting in the armchair no one ever uses or Carter’s perched at the table, tapping away at some mission plan with Kat at his side or Emile’s sprawled on the couch across from him, serene and still only when he’s too drained to stand.

The silence burns.

His body aches when he gets up for a morning run and he’s halfway down the street before he realizes he can’t go to the gym at Spartan Ops, can’t go on-base for anything at all for three _weeks_ and swears at Musa in as many languages as he can remember while he sprints down the path alongside the lake. He’s never taken it before, never even been near it. It smells like pine, like wide-open spaces, like the forests and the fields on Reach.

Jorge would have liked it here.

” _Damn you,_ Musa,” Jun snarls when he finally stops, heaving, heaving and staring out across the shimmering blue. The wind whips up, the first arctic bite to take the last leaves from the trees and Jun shivers and wraps his arms around himself. The sun’s barely up, barely beaming bright golden streams, and if he closes his eyes he swears he can feel a hand on his shoulder, a soft voice at his side. _Just take a minute and look_.

His eyes sting.

It’s the cold

“I am not doing this,” he says when he’s back and changed, flopped on his couch with one arm behind his head and phone glued to his ear. “Musa, I am not doing this.”

_“Three weeks,”_ Musa says calmly. _“Then you come back.”_

“I’ll be in tomorrow.”

_“Three weeks, Jun. If you show up here tomorrow I’ll have you escorted out.”_

Something like panic seizes his chest. “I don’t have anything to _do_.”

_“That’s the point.”_

“What the hell does that mean?”

“ _Three weeks.”_

“Musa—”

_“I have to go.”_

Jun almost throws the phone when it clicks off. Almost. It clatters on the coffee table, so loud in the small space.

“I don’t know what to do,” he repeats. His voice cracks. His throat’s so tight it hurts. “What am I supposed to _do?_ ”

He shuts his eyes and tosses and turns in his sleep. There’s fire, there’s fury, there’s Carter trying to breathe, trying to see, Six – Liz, her name was Liz – stalwart, fighting on, Emile, coughing, heaving. Kat’s there. Kat’s there. Kat’s falling, falling, gone. Jorge. Solid. Standing. Strong. Jorge. Jun reaches out a hand and it passes through. Mist. Ghost. Gone. Jorge. Never said goodbye. Never said goodbye to any of them.

He wakes screaming. His shirt’s plastered to his back.

He can’t stop shaking.

“I never said it,” he chokes to the darkness and the no one, driving his face into his hands and his knuckles into his eyes. “I never _said_ —”

Gone.

The sun rises red.

The phone’s so heavy in his hands.

“I’m not doing this,” he croaks, when the line clicks live. “Musa, I’m not—”

_“Three weeks, Jun.”_

“Give me something to _do_ ,” he barks. His voice cracks. It’s only been three days. “I can’t just—”

Musa sighs, a rough rattle against the speaker. Jun bounces his leg, faster, faster, and bites his lip so hard it bleeds. _“I said three weeks.”_

“I can’t do this,” Jun whispers, an explosive heave. It’s not something Spartans say, not something Spartans have ingrained. He’s never said it before today. “I need something to do.”

_“Jun—”_

“ _Please_.”

Musa sighs again. _“Can you give me a week?”_

Four days. Four more days of silence. Four more days to do nothing but _think_. “ _No_ ,” Jun hisses. “I am not doing this.”

Musa’s silent for a long beat.

Jun swallows back the plea. His mouth tastes like blood.

_“I’ll see you this afternoon,”_ Musa says, and Jun folds forward in his relief, wraps his free arm around himself and tries to stop the shaking. Always shaking. Why can’t he stop shaking?

“Thank you,” Jun whispers hoarsely and doesn’t even care that it comes out so broken. “ _Thank you_.”

Musa’s in his office when he shows up, sitting across from his chair like he’s been waiting for him. It makes him pause halfway around his desk, already reaching for the data-padd he left three days ago. Musa clamps a hand over it first and nods toward his seat. Jun lowers himself slowly into the chair.

“What?”

Musa hasn’t broken eye contact. “Do you remember what I said when I brought you into this?” he asks.

“That you had a job for me to do.”

“Answer something for me?”

“Of course.”

“How in the hell are you supposed to do that job when you can’t manage three days of leave?”

Jun raises an eyebrow. “I don’t see how that—”

Musa slams a fist into the table. Jun recoils. There’s a blade in his hand before he even has the chance to think about drawing it. “ _That_ ,” Musa says, “has everything to do with it.”

The knife slides back into its sheathe. “I can still do my job.”

"Not like this you can’t.”

Something sick wells in his chest. “What are you saying?”

“You’re staying here,” Musa says quickly and Jun’s shoulders sag. Musa frowns at him and Jun clears his throat and straightens again. “You’re _staying_ _here_. But this has to change.”

“What do you want me to do?” Jun asks quietly.

“That’s something you have to figure out on your own.”

"But I—”

“Figure out what you need to do,” Musa repeats firmly. “And I’ll make sure you have the opportunity.” 

“I don’t understand.”

Musa blows out a breath but there’s no exasperation in it. “Whatever you need to do to _grieve_ ,” he says, suddenly so uncharacteristically soft. “Do it.”

The rooms at the barracks feel more like home than any apartment ever will. The spaces aren’t filled yet; they’re a long way from fireteams so he takes the opportunity to steal away to them when he can. The other bunks are empty but if he shuts his eyes, sometimes he thinks he can hear someone else breathe.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says, curled up on the top bunk. There’s no answering _hmm_ from Jorge, always on the cot below. “I just wish I’d—”

In an instant, he knows.

“I want to go back,” Jun says as soon as Musa’s wheeled into the conference room and settled his supplies.

Musa stiffens. “You want to go back,” he says, like he’s not sure he heard correctly. “To Reach?”

"Yes.”

“Why?”

“To say goodbye.”

Musa nods. “All right,” he says, and that’s all. Like it’s a simple request.

Jun almost wants to hug him.

_Infinity_ ’s a hell of a flagship. It doesn’t feel like home, not like the _Dawn_ did, but it’s close enough. Jun shrugs into the bodysuit he hasn’t worn for months now but still seems like a second skin.

“Are you sure about this?”

Jun doesn’t answer, tugging his helmet on. It should be strange to be back in armor after all this time but if anything he feels safer, not suffocated.

“Jun.” Lasky’s voice drops, soft, _kind_. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to _find_.”

Jun keys the hatch to the shuttle bay and stands silent for a long beat.

Lasky waits.

“Captain,” Jun offers at last, “I have to say goodbye.”

—-


End file.
